Fun Trivia Facts

Well, I know, it is not Monday, but it is the Wednesday "Hump" Day and since we missed Monday, tonight we are presenting Fun Trivia Facts. If you have had a rough day and are not looking forward to the rest of the week, perhaps this brief respite will help you survive.

Tonight we are going to rejoice that we are not living in England between 1558 and 1603:

At that time, medicines were not so advanced, it really was not wise to get sick. If you did get sick, you may have been asked to ingest some powdered burnt swallow feathers (do you know how stinky that is?), red coral, pigeon's dung or your own (YUCK!!), mistletoe may be taken in the month of March, swallow syrup of poppy, earthworms, or consume a prepared pill or suppository coated in gold. One cure for kidney stones was a mixture of white wine (OK, I can do that...), salad oil, powdered crab's eyes (do you KNOW how little those are?) and the bone in a carp's head. I think I would rather be sick than to take any of those medications!!!

The women's clothes were not quite as you would think during this time either. The clothes were mix and match (sort of like today...but not..). Sleeves, bodices and skirts were not connected. You connected the different pieces with straight pins (OUCH!). That is largely because safety pins were not invented until 1849. You really didn't want to bend too much for sure... At least if you had two dresses, you could make a lot of different combinations this way...

How many of you think men's codpieces were places to put the man's "junk"? They were not used for that at all...often they were stuffed, and a man could keep important things (no, not the "family jewels") like money, papers, etc in a codpiece for storage...

Now if I was worried about being poisoned, I would wear a ring containing a piece of a unicorn's horn because if I wore that, I was protected from poisonings. The problem? No such thing as Unicorns...ooops..

In England, young men would play female characters in theatrical roles. Women were not allowed on stage at the time. Elizabethans believed there was a difference in genders right from the start. A male fetus was thought to grow on the right side of the womb and the female, the left. Fortunately, the reasoning for malformed or unusual-looking children was switching from the idea of the mother sleeping with the Devil to the more "forward-thinking" concept of Maternal Impressions. If a pregnant woman saw something that startled her, the baby born would have some resemblance to that particular thing (like a boy with scaly skin like a fish, or a horsey face child..). Craving strawberries could cause a woman's unborn child to be born with a "strawberry" birthmark on their skin.

Hopefully you are now happier that you are here now, instead of in England between 1558 and 1603. We all need to be glad about something.

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Until tomorrow...